Summer in the city

Day:         110

Distance: 7.43km/4.62 miles

Time:       36:56 secs

Calories:  623

It's a beautifully sunny end to the week. It's only April but the last few days have felt decidedly summery. After months of running through snow, wind, rain and plunging temperatures this feels like a nice reward.

With the sunlight streaming in through the bedroom curtains I have no difficulty waking up early to prepare for this run into work. I actually have to get up earlier now than I was a couple of weeks ago as I need to fit in the various stretches that the physio's given me. The stretches for the Iliotibial band on my left leg seem to have  sorted out the problem that I had a couple of weeks back, so I'm more than happy to get up that little bit earlier to do them.

When I first started running into work a couple of years back this run would take anything up to 45 minutes. I've not done it in a little while, so I was more than a little surprised to get to the end of it and find I'd done it in the time recorded above. I think it shows the progress that I've made as I've chipped away at the marathon training over the last few months.

Without even trying I ran this 7.5km route at a really decent pace. Run Keeper has recorded it at 8 mins/km on average. That's considerably faster than I need to go in order to complete the marathon in 3:40 mins. In fact, averaging that pace would give a finish time of around 3.5 hours. Granted, the marathon is around 22 miles longer than this route but after Wednesday's 32 minute run left me knackered and out of breath I'm looking for all the positives I can find.

Talking of positives and thinking again about the sunny weather I found myself thinking about a band called Symposium for probably the first time in 10 years. There's no reason why you should be aware of this bunch of 'erberts from Shepherds Bush, but back in the late '90s I quite enjoyed their punk pop offerings. I seem to remember the NME wetting themselves over their early singles - not that that's any kind of guide to quality (yep, I still remember them labelling Andrew WK "the saviour of music"). 

Anyway, the song that I was thinking of in particular was called "Drink the sunshine". The wonderful title seemed very appropriate, but when I listened to the song earlier today I was struck by how ordinary it was. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, clearly. Luckily, Symposium did have other upbeat, sunny numbers up their sleeves so I'm pleased to recommend "Farewell to twilight" instead. Let's hope the sunshine continues!